10 Interesting (To Me) Stats For This Week - March 4
Welcome back to another week of ’10 Interesting (To Me) Stats’. This week, a big focus will be on individual team changes compared to last season. With the trade deadline on Friday, many rosters will look different than they do now, so it’s our last chance to get an idea of how teams have changed before many rosters are overhauled.
As always, player data from Natural Stat Trick, tracking data from AllThreeZones, and viz from HockeyViz, and data is as of the afternoon of Monday, March 3rd.
1 – Bring Out Your Dead
The bottom three teams in the league by points percentage are San Jose, Chicago, and Nashville, and the first two teams are especially awful as Chicago and San Jose are both on pace for fewer than 60 points. Here is how the nine playoff teams from the West (Calgary and Vancouver are tied by points% for the final spot) and eight playoff teams from the East have fared against the bottom-2 teams in their respective Conference:
Even if we take out one of Vancouver/Calgary, the points percentage still works out to .813, and the West teams will still have an extra five games against those awful franchises. Maybe the East looks mediocre because they don’t have the same tomato cans the West does.
2 – Hot Chicken Shit
Nashville gave up three goals at 5-on-5 in Sunday’s 4-0 loss against the New York Rangers. They are now 28th in the league by that measure. From 2021-2024, the Predators were 12th by goals against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, and never worse than 14th in any single season. Things have gone horribly wrong in 2024-25.
A big reason is a rise in zone entries allowed. Here is how Nashville’s defencemen have fared each of the last four seasons by percentage of opponent zone entries denied compared to the league average:
There is a lot more that goes into this than simply this one stat, but that Nashville has typically been better than the league average at denying their blue line to the opponent (and last year was much better), this year’s implosion is notable.
3 – Chatfield/Orlov Getting Hurri-blamed
Carolina has been going through it for a while now, and a lot of it is their defence. Over the prior three seasons, Carolina had the lowest rate of expected goals against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, and second-lowest rate of actual goals against. This season, their expected goals against rate is 10th while their goals against rate is tied for 21st.
Part of the problem seems to be the pair of Dmitry Orlov and Jalen Chatfield. They have much bigger roles than last year thanks to Brett Pesce and Brady Skjei leaving in the offseason, and the defence has suffered for it. Tracking data shows that in their combined 5-on-5 ice time, teams are creating scoring chances a whopping 55% more often (relatively speaking) compared to last year:
Orlov has seen his goals against rate jump 34% while Chatfield’s is up 18%. The Hurricanes need to make life easier on their goalies or else they very well could come up short in the playoffs once again.
4 – Vancouver Ca-Luckranout
One year after Vancouver finished tied for 3rd in the league by goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, they are 25th in the league this season, and in range with teams like San Jose and Chicago. What is curious about that is that by a lot of key tracking stats we look at – scoring chance assists (SCA), high-danger passes, offence from both the rush and cycle, and shots off high-danger passes – Vancouver this season is better than, or similar to, Vancouver last season:
Beyond Elias Pettersson clearly playing through a knee injury, the lesson here is that volume matters. Last season, the Canucks were 22nd in the league by shot rate, and that has dropped to 31st this year. Creating quality is important, but hockey is still a random game, and when you generate so few shots, being on the wrong side of the puck-luck battle will crush your offence.
5 – Ana-High Danger Ducks
Speaking of scoring changes, the Anaheim Ducks sit with 2.14 goals/60 at 5-on-5 this season, up from 1.98 goals/60 last season. They are still a bottom-5 team, but that is an improvement of 8.1%. If they can improve at the same rate again next season, they are suddenly average-ish by 5-on-5 goal scoring.
This isn’t just luck, either. There are three teams who have improved their rate of high-danger passes by at least 30% compared to last season, and Anaheim has the second-highest improvement:
The Ducks still have a lot of work to do, and their young players need to keep improving, but it certainly seems as if they’re moving in the right direction.
6 – Flame On
A big reason why the Calgary Flames are still in the playoff race is because they’re giving up the third-fewest goals against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. Part of that is on rookie goaltender Dustin Wolf, who has been excellent most of this year. The other part is that Calgary is making life fairly easy on him, at least compared to most teams. Here are the five teams allowing the fewest high-danger passes against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5:
Those are the types of passes that lead to high-percentage shots, so Calgary is limiting how many tough saves Wolf has to make. It doesn’t take away from how well he’s playing but just adds context to how well the defence in front of him has been playing, too.
7 – Doan’t Give Up
Utah forward Josh Doan started the season in the NHL but was then demoted. He was recalled in January and since that point, he is fourth among the team’s forwards by points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. Doan also sits fourth by relative goal share at 5-on-5, and leads their group by relative expected goal share at 5-on-5. In fact, he and Lawson Crouse have formed a very good third line:
With those two on the ice at 5-on-5 this season, the team is outscoring the opposition 7-4, and that really helps lengthen their lineup. Utah is firmly in the playoff race in the West, and great contributions from this line are a reason why.
8 – Only Six Years Left
It has clearly been a very bad season for Boston’s marquee offseason signee Elias Lindholm. When digging underneath into what’s going on, things look even worse.
The tracking data has 270 forwards with at least 150 tracked minutes. Of those 270 forwards, 16 have yet to be counted for a high-danger pass at 5-on-5 (either across the slot or from behind the net), one of them being Lindholm. Of those 16 players, here are his closest comparables by scoring chance contributions (scoring chances and assists on teammate chances):
Lindholm has been good defensively, which is nice. But for someone with a $7.75-million cap hit, being good (not even great) defensively isn’t enough.
9 – Claytemi Kellnarin
This is for no other reason than it’s always interesting to compare players who have been included in MVP conversations at times in their career and players who aren’t really deemed superstars. This is the case for Artemi Panarin (top-5 in MVP voting twice in the last five seasons) and Clayton Keller (never received as much as a fifth-place vote in his career). Here is how they compare by goals per 60 minutes, primary assist per 60 minutes, and shots per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 over the last four seasons:
The difference between the two has largely been just power-play production. Keller currently sits 10th among forwards by points per game this season. If he goes on a hot streak to round out the year and Utah makes playoffs, will he get MVP consideration? No, but it’s an interesting thought, nonetheless.
10 – Carbohydrate Is Important, Pasta Is Good
Speaking of MVPs, a drum I was banging last year was that Boston’s David Pastrňák deserved a lot more MVP consideration for how he single-handedly carried Boston’s offence. That has continued this year, and now it’s nearly two full seasons where he’s been arguably any team’s most important offensive player. In fact, over the last two seasons, his rate of points per 60 minutes at even strength is 27.6% higher than the next-closest Bruins forward. His points rate is also 41.2% higher than the third-highest Bruins forward, and both marks lead the league:
The funniest part is not only is that mark of 41.2% more points per 60 mintues at even strength the only difference over 40%, it is the only mark over 33%. Boston is still in the playoff race, and it’s because of one player.
Until next week.
